The Ape Man (1943), William Beaudine.

Pretty thin gruel.  Lugosi plays a scientist who has, through the course of his experiments, taken on ape-like characteristics (a stooped walk and excess facial hair).  From the first moment we see him, sleeping on a bed of straw in a cage he is sharing with a gorilla, Lugosi looks like he has given up.  His character is neither very menacing nor very sympathetic.  What was he working on anyway?  We don't know!  We just know his half-assed experiments gave him some uninspiring side-effects.  While testing a cure, we witness a shabby performance of stretching and exclaimations that his back is straightening up.  Jeesh, someone should have just gone to the drugstore for some Robaxacet!   Story ambles on with the help of a newspaper man and girl photographer (played by Louise Currie, the "Katherine Hepburn" of Monogram).  Also features requisite guy in plastic ape costume, Emil Van Horn, who apparently lived off the proceeds of said costume but was evicted from his apartment and lost his general livelihood when it was stolen in Pensacola, Florida! This may be a good a time as any to point out that there are websites devoted to "Gorilla Men," actors that played apes for a living!

http://www.members.shaw.ca/gorillagallery2/gorillamenclassic/gorilla_men_index.htm
http://gorillamen.blogspot.com/

Voodoo Man (1944), William Beaudine.

 

Monogram's Lugosi vehicles are a mish-mash of attributes stolen from superior films, and Voodoo Man is no exception.  Unwilling to stick to something unadorned by Dracula or even White Zombie, Monogram clutters scenes with hackneyed imagery.  Even the obsessive quest of the film's antihero Dr Marlowe (Lugosi) to revive his beloved wife is taken from countless others and makes this film very close (is it a remake?) of The Corpse Vanishes, made two years earlier.  It struck me as incongruous to see sassy wartime gals in square-shouldered dresses and wedge heels stuffed into the roles that were played first by the thin, ethereal creatures of the 1930s.  The Stella Saunders character seems just as likely to tell a man to go peel a grape as she does to be quickly hypnotized into following him down a dank cave entrance. 

The storyline of Voodoo Man is tighter than other Monograms, and I can absorb John Carradine's wild-eyed sideshow acting approach (and endless "hi, how are you" bongo beat) without too much discomfort.  In the film's last scene the young Banner Productions screenwriter and hero of the tale slaps his horror screenplay on his boss's desk and says, "you might want to consider Bela Lugosi for the part."  Well, at least Monogram was bold enough to realize they were never going to be much more than cheap camp.  Perhaps an appropriate ending for what would also be the end of Lugosi's connection with the studio.

For a brilliant rundown of this film check out Acidemic: http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2010/02/voodoo-man-patron-saint-of.html

Classic nosy-housekeeper-at-the-door shot.  Better still is the next shot: Lugosi snapping his fingers at her to quit listening.

The Corpse Vanishes (1942), Wallace Fox.

Daffy!  Trust me, it's worth suffering through the terrible dialogue because this horror B is fairly amusing and moves swiftly.  The premise is loopy (of course) and leaves us standing knee deep in unanswered questions and loose ends.  Lugosi is an orchid horticulturalist / mad scientist who extracts an unspecified liquid from the necks of young ladies with a long needle and transfers whatever this is (phlogiston?) into his wife's neck, providing her with everlasting youth.  Got it?  Frisky female reporter Pat Hunter catches on to this, and spends an eventful night at Lugosi's place.   Her beau Dr Foster is endlessly dull and dopey.  "Dr Foster!  A man broke into my room last night while I was sleeping!"  "Oh, it must have been your imagination, Pat."  OK, bub.  Foster is played by perfectly-named Monogram regular Tristram Coffin (no joke).

Invisible Ghost (1941) Joseph H Lewis.

Karloff, in Edgar G Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934).

Ah, these men of the 30s and 40s B's, keeping up appearances in their suits and smoking jackets, pining away for their lost wives.  Lingering before her portrait or erm, well, lovingly studying her embalmed body in their unwavering dedication to the notion of eternal marriage.  How romantic, this love that never fades and drives them all slowly insane.

Invisible Ghost is a terrible movie, let's not kid ourselves.  It's full of B-movie chestnuts, including the nightmarish court scene convicting an innocent man, the older wealthy man living in his exquisitely furnished home with his dutiful and gorgeous adult daughter.  We even have twin brothers.  Much of Invisible Ghost makes no sense.  So... Bela Lugosi's house has been the scene of multiple murders, you say?  And nobody thinks it odd that the whole famdamily stays there without starting to point fingers at one another?  The story is that Lugosi's wife has absconded with a strange man, only to end up in a terrible car wreck that kills her lover and unhinges her mind.  Weirdness creeps into this somewhat stilted film:  Lugosi's gardener finds the runaway wife and keeps her in his basement until the best time to inform his boss that she's returned home, not wanting to expose the family to her temporary insanity.  Lugosi of course is not quite mens sana himself we discover;  he has a bit of a fissure in his own psyche.  Not particularly original but in some instances eerie...  a temporarily mad Lugosi is stricken with murderous intent, creeps into his daughter's bedroom where she is sleeping, slips off his housecoat and holds it out like a garrote...